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Fundica helps accelerate the online funding search for entrepreneurs in Canada. Once a year they take their mission offline and organize the country's only Funding Roadshow. In 2015, the SoftLayer Catalyst startup program partnered with Fundica to take the Roadshow to 11 cities across the country where they listened to over 200 entrepreneurs pitch their tech startups to panels of funders.

I recently sat down with Lana Tayara from the Funding Roadshow.

So, tell us about the purpose behind organizing the Funding Roadshow.The mission of the event is to better facilitate connections between entrepreneurs, funders from private and public sectors, and startup community leaders across Canada. The event aims to fulfill its purpose though a series of events, planned in 11 cities across Canada, by providing educational content designed to help early-stage technology based companies either start and/or grow their business. The one-day event is split into two streams throughout the course of the day. The first one allows up to 20 selected tech companies to present their business in a private room to a panel of investors, mentors, and service providers and get candid feedback to help them validate their business model. The second stream is open to all participants, comprised of all company stages, community developers, investors, and services providers, to listen to great presentations provided by industry leaders that will cover a wide range of topics designed to help them succeed with their business.

To maximize engagement in each city, the Funding Roadshow collaborates with local pro-entrepreneurship groups (accelerators, incubators, universities). In turn, this allows us to better connect our national partners with the local entrepreneurial community and its facilitators. Our national partners get the opportunity to network with each community, gain visibility nationally in the startup scene, and raise awareness about the resources they can offer to Canadian businesses.

What were your 2015 Funding Roadshow goals?The goals of the 2015 Funding Roadshow were to establish new partnerships with key players of the entrepreneurial community across Canada that would engage participants in each city to generate relevant connections, opportunities, and resources to each person present in the event.

In the 2015 Funding Roadshow, based on a follow-up survey conducted three months later, 31.6 percent of entrepreneurs were offered funding and 33.3 percent of funders funded entrepreneurs. With respect to the funding aspect of our event, our selection criteria for pitching companies were stricter, and presentation guidelines were shared with companies as to increase the quality of pitches and funding probability for 2015.

Lastly, we also offered a wider range of educational topics such as funding, growth models, legal guidance, bookkeeping, storytelling, and other resources available to help startups with their success. We would like to share the value with business owners using technology such as financial management software, online banking, cloud hosting, and secure cloud-based document storage, which can help increase efficiency and productivity within their organization.

What do you think the 2015 Funding Roadshow accomplished?The 2015 Funding Roadshow travelled through 11 cities from Halifax to Victoria. In each city, up to 20 selected technology-based companies pitched to a panel of eight funders. The initiative was put together with 59 partners, and provided over 96 educational presentations, and engaged 1,147 participants coast-to-coast. The Funding Roadshow was very proud to be able to form new partnerships with two of the most influential hubs in Canada, MaRS and Ryerson DMZ, both of which welcomed the event into their space as exclusive hosting partners in downtown Toronto.

Based on on-site feedback forms we collected from participants across Canada, we received excellent responses:

100 percent of participants who took the survey (funders, pitchers, community members, and general attendees) would participate in the next Funding Roadshow. (Based on a 19 percent participation response.)

94 percent of all participants who answered the survey were satisfied to very satisfied.

We are already in talks with returning sponsors who have reached out to express interest in the next edition of the Funding Roadshow.

Please relate some highlights from across this year's Roadshow. Any themes which emerged amongst all the pitching and networking?

Canadian VCs (venture capitalists) are investing more in early-stage companies.

There is an increase in interest from U.S. investors in mid to later stage companies.

Angel investment in technology companies has increased in comparison to previous years.

Emerging accelerators and collaboration between them.

Government funding varies significantly between provinces.

Early stage companies are still struggling with funding identification.

Overall the Funding Roadshow was a great success, and we can’t wait for 2016. SoftLayer will be there. Will you?

This guest blog post is written by Alexia Emmanoulopoulou, marketing manager at Canonical.

With OpenStack, cloud computing becomes easily accessible to everyone. It tears down financial barriers to cloud deployments and tackles the fear of lock-in. One of the main benefits of OpenStack is the fact that it is open source and supported by a wide ecosystem, with contributions from more than 200 companies, including Canonical and IBM. Users can change service providers and hardware at any time, and compared to other clouds using virtualization technology, OpenStack can double server utilization to as much as 85 percent. This means that an OpenStack cloud is economical and delivers more flexibility, scalability, and agility to businesses. The challenge however lies in recruiting and retaining OpenStack experts, who are in high demand, making it hard for companies to deploy OpenStack on time and on budget. But BootStack, Canonical’s managed cloud product solved that problem by offering all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management.

Addressing the Challenge of Finding OpenStack Experts

Resourcing an OpenStack six-strong team to work 24x7 would cost between $900,000 and $1.5 million and can take months of headhunting. Thus the savings that OpenStack should bring companies are eroded so Canonical created BootStack, short for Build, Operate, and Optionally Transfer. It’s a new service for setting up and operating an OpenStack cloud, in both on-premises and hosted environments, and it gives users the option of taking over the management of your cloud in the future.

After working with each customer to define their requirements and specify the right cloud infrastructure for their business, Canonical’s experienced engineering and support team builds and manages the entire cloud infrastructure of the customer, including Ubuntu OpenStack, the underlying hypervisor, and deployment onto hosted or on-premises hardware. As a result, users get all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management. For added protection, BootStack is backed by a clear SLA that covers cloud availability at the user’s desired scale as well as uptime and responsiveness metrics.

Choosing Between On-premises and Hosted Cloud

Some companies prefer to host on-premises because they feel more secure knowing their cloud is running on their own site. However, when things go wrong, some companies find they don’t have the expertise on-hand to quickly recover. Furthermore, on-site hosting is at least three times as expensive as it is to outsource to a hosting specialist.

With the hosted option for BootStack, your OpenStack cloud will be hosted on Ubuntu-certified hardware in SoftLayer data centers. SoftLayer provides customizable bare metal and virtual servers run on the highest performing cloud infrastructure available. Users can seamlessly move data between servers at no cost and benefit from secure, fast, and low-latency communications between data centers. 24x7 expert staff in each data center can troubleshoot any rare issues that can’t be directly resolved through their self-service management portal. Canonical and SoftLayer also take care of patches and upgrades to both the operating system and OpenStack, hardware and software failure prevention and fix, proactive health monitoring of the cloud and hardware, and resolution of any other problems.

No Lock-In and Predictable Cost

The two features that set BootStack apart from other managed cloud products are the predictable cost structure and the lack of lock-in. With BootStack, users can access every tool and every machine, any time. A company can choose to take over the management of its cloud at any time, at which point it will receive training and support from Canonical to ensure a smooth transition. BootStack customers can then choose to either bring their cloud in-house or continue hosting with SoftLayer.

In terms of costs, BootStack cloud is priced at $15 per day per server, plus the cost of the hosting. SoftLayer offers a number of bare metal servers that exceed the OpenStack recommended configuration, starting at $699 per month. You pay as you go, and can scale as your business needs change.

All-in-all, it’s a flexible managed cloud at a predictable cost with expert staff to manage it until you’re ready to take over!

Whether you already process credit card information or are just starting to consider it, you’ve likely made yourself familiar with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). The PCI-DSS’s 12 requirements (plus one appendix for service providers) outlines what you need to do to have a compliant workload and to pass your audits.

While SoftLayer handles the physical access and security aspects on our platform, we also offer tools to supplement your internal tools and processes to help you maintain PCI-DSS compliance such as the Citrix NetScaler VPX and MPX Platinum Edition product line.

Unique Features NetScaler Offers That Support PCI-DSS

Mask Payment Account Numbers (PANs)

With NetScaler Platinum Edition it’s possible to configure the device to block or mask PANs to prevent leakage of cardholder data—even if your application is attempting to present the data to a user. This is extremely useful when adhering to PCI-DSS Section 3.3—the first six and last four digits are the maximum number of digits to be displayed.

NetScaler provides reporting as well so that your developers can tighten up that aspect of your application for more identification protection.

Detect and Prevent Web-based Attacks

By deploying a Web application firewall into your application stack, you can fully comply with PCI-DSS Section 6.6, which requires addressing new threats and vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis and ensuring these applications are protected against known attacks. The NetScaler Application Firewall module included in Platinum Edition provides continuous protection and can dynamically adjust to changes in your application code.

The NetScaler Web Application Firewall helps close the door on many common coding vulnerabilities outlined in PCI-DSS Section 6.5. By utilizing XML security protections, form tagging, dynamic context sensitive protections, and deep stream inspection, you can block, log, and report on these common security vectors and ensure your development team can shore up you applications

How to Order
SoftLayer offers Citrix NetScaler VPX Standard and Platinum Editions in multiple bandwidth packages—10Mbps, 200Mbps, and 1Gbps. Order these quickly and easily from your customer portal devices page (click order devices, scroll to networking devices, and select Citrix NetScaler).

SoftLayer also provides the NetScaler MPX for customers that require a dedicated hardware appliance running the NetScaler OS that can handle thousands of concurrent SSL transactions. To order the MPX product, chat with one of our sales advisors.

Be sure to take a look at some of the other features included with Citrix NetScaler.

Learn More About PCI-DSS
SoftLayer supports PCI workloads by providing the physical security required in the DSS. Within the customer portal you’re able to pull our most recent SOC 2 Type II audit report. You can use this as part of your compliance strategy. The rest is up to you to take advantage of the tools and services to make sure you meet the remaining PCI standards. Additionally, when you’re working with your PCI-DSS qualified security assessor, we can also provide an Attestation of Compliance.

If you’ve been following along at home (and we hope you have been), you’re probably well-versed in SoftLayer and Cloudant’s free Big Data Academy, the (free) webinar and workshop series designed to teach you all about deploying big data workloads in the cloud, optimizing your infrastructure environment, and capitalizing on the value of your data. (Did we mention it’s free?)

Did you enjoy these Big Data Academy webinars? Well, get offline and follow them to Europe! The Big Data Academy is trekking across the continent this summer, with free in-person workshops in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Helsinki throughout June and July. Register now and max out that summer vacation with a European workshop. (Bonus: All workshop participants will receive a special offer up to $1,250 per month for six months on SoftLayer.)

There’s something unique about getting an opinion about a product or service from someone who has actually used that service—it’s part of the reason why the reviews on Amazon and apps like Yelp have become so popular.

We can tell you all day long about all the things the SoftLayer cloud platform is capable of, but wouldn’t it be nice to get real life accounts about real customers who are building real businesses by using it?

The new customer stories page on our website features video and written stories of just that—happy customers who wanted to share their experiences about changing their industries or improving the way they do business by using SoftLayer.

And some of our customers are doing some really, really cool things. Take Sohonet, for example. The company is using the SoftLayer cloud to improve processes in the movie industry. Its private network for processing, storing, and collaborating on media workloads in the cloud has set a new standard for production and post-production work in the media industry. Check it out:

We have many more SoftLayer customers who are also doing cool things. You can read their stories on our new customer stories page.

We think we have some of the most innovative customers in the cloud. If you’re thinking about becoming one of them, take a look around. Then sign up, and maybe you can be our next featured story.

Through the ongoing (and free!) Big Data Academy, SoftLayer and Cloudant have teamed up to help you learn more about deploying big data workloads in the cloud, optimizing your infrastructure environment, and capitalizing on the value of your data via a series of free webinars and workshops.

But we know some of you prefer learning at your leisure, so we’re recapping our Big Data Academy webinars just for you. Last week, we brought you the first of our Big Data Academy webinar rewind series, “Always Be Open for Business with Cloud Solutions for E-commerce.” This week, we’ll be talking hybrid cloud: security, building and establishing trust and compliance, and enabling a hybrid computing environment.

Watch the webinar below:

Stay tuned for the next Big Data Academy webinar rewind, where we'll tackle the challenges and present the solutions to gaming and mobile app development.

By the way, are you in Europe this summer? The Big Data Academy is backpacking across the continent, with free in-person workshops in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Helsinki throughout June and July. Register now and top off your summer vacation with a free European workshop. (Bonus: All workshop participants will receive a special offer up to $1,250 per month for six months on SoftLayer.)

My day as a customer support technician begins very early. I leave home at 6 a.m. to start my shift at 7 a.m., relieving the overnight shift. Customers start calling, opening tickets, and chat sessions almost immediately after I log into one of our systems, either LivePerson Agent Console, Cisco Phone Agent, or SoftLayer’s ticket management system, which is dependent on employee scheduling, specialty, or customer traffic.

Should our customers ever need help, we are prepared and up-to-date as possible on what’s going on with our internal systems. Every morning I check for any notices received via email from different internal teams about updates to the network, server upgrades, or emergency maintenances that could be relevant to the tickets and questions of the day. Besides current update notifications we use to address customer questions and concerns, we also use our external wikis (also known as the KnowledgeLayer) for existing information should we need it. As customer support technicians, we also have unprecedented access to troubleshooting, managing, and restoring customers’ various services to the peak of their performance.

Thank you for calling SoftLayer. How can I help you?
At the beginning of the week, the phone starts ringing around 7:30 a.m., and then it starts to pick up—Monday’s are usually the busiest.

When a phone call comes in, I verify the caller and then try to get a grasp on the nature of the situation. Sometimes, for example, it’s a customer needing help troubleshooting an eVault backup solution. In most situations, I ask if they have checked the official tutorials posted by SoftLayer on how to set up eVault (or other topic at hand). Whether they have or not, I then walk the customer through the steps. Some topics can be a little confusing, and depending on the level of technical difficulty and the customer’s knowledge, I sometimes take care of the job for them. Some issues can be difficult, but that’s why we’re here. In regards to the eVault solution, thankfully, it comes with a help file containing screenshots to help customers of any technical level grasp the configuration process.

We also receive calls that aren’t one-on-one, but rather from an entire IT department of a company. In one particular instance, I received a call asking for help to change the boot order on a couple of production servers. Rebooting without permission can have catastrophic effects on any live data being written to servers. We need permission first. After receiving approval via ticket, I worked with the IT team as they turned off applications safely on their respective servers so that I could in turn reboot one-by-one and change the boot order from the BIOS as needed. (SoftLayer's customer support technicians change the boot order because the BIOS on servers are protected to prevent manual tampering with server hardware.)

One last example—hard-pressed system administrators working against the clock to deploy their load balancers need VIPs set up as soon as possible, so they can handle the traffic to their blooming social media website. In this case, depending on the type of load balancer, I first check with sales on the pricing. Then I open a ticket to get customer approval for the costs of the IPs. If it’s a Netscaler VPX load balancer, we inform the customer to order portable IPs within the same VLAN as their load balancer. Once confirmed, I get to work. Thankfully, Citrix Netscaler has a very easy to use interface that allows migrating portable IPs for use plus they take effect almost immediately.

No matter the customer or the situation, we always practice working in a professional demeanor to make sure we efficiently address the problem. Once I finish helping a customer, I follow up with a summary of what had been done and then make sure everything is working as needed. A summary of my actions is also posted on the ticket for customer future reference.

Opening a Ticket
We aim to give an initial response within 15 minutes of each ticket being opened. Tickets not only provide a great way to follow up with a customer, but they also provide a platform for directly sending the customer helpful guides, steps, screenshots, and explanations that would have not have sufficed over the phone call.

Tickets allow customers to specify the queue and title of the ticket, which narrows the issue to the department they feel would best answer their question. For example, if a customer opens a ticket saying they can't see all their devices in their device list with a title “devices not listed,” it gives us clues about the nature of the problem. By opening a ticket with the support group, instead of, say, the sales group, we know that this isn't an issue with ordering servers or ordered servers.

To troubleshoot the devices-not-listed above, I would check if the user who opened the ticket is a master user for the account. If not, then it is without a doubt a permissions issue or limited permissions set by the master user. To resolve an issue like this, the master user on the account would need to update permissions.

But that’s not always the case. If it’s not a permissions issue, then as customer support technician I'd be limited in the support I can offer. The issue for the devices not being listed could potentially be an internal bug, which is a job for SoftLayer’s development team. Once escalated to them, they would oversee the problem. During the escalation, the customer support team keeps the customer informed. We also work as the “go-to" between SoftLayer’s internal teams and customer.

Once the devices-not-listed issue has been resolved, SoftLayer’s development team would mark the escalation resolved. My team would then follow up with the customer to verify that the issue is resolved. This multi-step, inter-department interaction (depending on the severity of the problem) can take as little as a couple of hours to sometimes days. Regardless of the length of time, the customer is always kept in the loop of any changes or updates.

After ensuring the issue is resolved, we inform the customer that if there are no more replies within four days, the ticket automatically closes. This provides ample time for the customer to review the conversation and join in later if need be.

Quitting Time
As a customer support technician, I never know what question or concern might arise, but we try our best to always help the customer as best we can.

My shift begins to wind down around 3 p.m. when the next shift takes over. Our customer support technicians work late into the night and into the morning, 24x7x365.

The world of big data applications is a nebulous one; to say a lot is expected of these apps is the understatement of the year. Their workloads are massive, their challenges are many, and their infrastructure solutions must be tailored to support the amount of work they do.

But where big data workloads raise big questions, the cloud has big answers. Through the Big Data Academy, SoftLayer and Cloudant have joined forces to help you learn more about deploying big data workloads in the cloud, optimizing your infrastructure environment, and capitalizing on the value of your data via a series of free webinars and workshops.

What if you weren't able to catch any of the free webinars or workshops this time around? You're in luck: we'll be presenting them here in a three-part series you can watch, pause, rewind, and replay at your leisure.

Our Big Data Academy webinar series rewind kicks off by teaching you how to make the cloud work for those big data applications in the land of e-commerce. In short, you’ll learn how to optimize while you monetize.

Watch the webinar below:

Stay tuned for the next Big Data Academy webinar rewind, where we'll talk all about security in the hybrid cloud. Better yet, if you find yourself in Europe this summer, the Big Data Academy has gone backpacking across the continent, with free in-person workshops in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Helsinki throughout June and July. Register now and top off your summer vacation with a free European workshop. (Bonus: All workshop participants will receive a special offer up to $1,250 per month for six months on SoftLayer.)

It’s been a couple of months since our Sydney data center opened for business, and within this short span we’ve seen a sizable uptake of SoftLayer services—both from existing and new customers in the region. We thought that it was an ideal time to meet these SoftLayer enthusiasts. So, recently SoftLayer CTO Marc Jones, Lead Developer Evangelist Phil Jackson, and a bunch of SLayers visited the city to host workshops, meetups, and a Sydney Launch Party.

Here is a quick snapshot of what went down, Down Under.

≡Developer Workshop at Tank Stream Labs

This year we took the roadshow developer workshops to Australia to celebrate the launch of the Sydney data center (the first round of developer workshops debuted late last year in Asia; read more: Cloud Conversations Ruled at the SoftLayer Asia Roadshow). Led by Phil, the workshop covered managing deployments using the SoftLayer Application Programming Interface (API). The workshop helped developers interact with their accounts, products, and services using direct API calls in a development environment. Phil also answered questions and helped attendees understand, solve, and implement specific ideas in their SoftLayer environments.

≡Sydney Launch Party at the Hotel CBD Fourth Floor

SoftLayer users and enthusiasts came together to join us for an evening of great conversations and excellent music. Marc discussed why SoftLayer selected Sydney for its next data center as well as gave some insight to SoftLayer products and expansion. We spent the evening chatting with our customers and key guys in the startup space.

We’d like to give a shout out to Greg Furlong, CEO & Founder of ChannelPace, David Holmes, CDO of Hostworks, and Jessica Sullivan, Marketing and Business Development Consultant and Founder sbFlourish for taking the time to chat with us. Also, thanks to all those who participated in the workshop and attended the launch party.

I am looking forward to being back in the city with all its amazing restaurants and delicacies, but mostly because it would be amazing to check back with our clients and hear more stories on how SoftLayer services are being used.

Yesterday, a security advisory designated CVE-2015-3456 / XSA-133 was publicly announced. The advisory identified a vulnerability, which has become commonly known as "VENOM", through which an attacker could exploit floppy driver support in QEMU to escalate their privileges.

SoftLayer engineers, in concert with our technology partners, completed a deep analysis of the vulnerability and determined that SoftLayer virtual servers are not affected by this issue.

We're always committed to ensuring our customers' operations and data are well protected. If customers have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to SoftLayer support or your direct SoftLayer contacts.